If you are unable to come to the surgery you may request a home visit. Please telephone between 8.00am and 10.30am wherever possible for visits on the day. You will be asked a few details so the doctors can plan their visits. Please remember that much of the equipment and diagnostic facilities in the surgery are not available during home visits. Also the time taken to make one visit is the equivalent to seeing four or more patients in the surgery, so if you could possibly come to the surgery this would be much appreciated.
Policy and Criteria for Home Visits Information for Patients
- Patients who are too ill or physically incapable of travelling to the surgery may request a home visit.
- Home visits are for patients who are genuinely housebound and do not leave the house for any reason. Age is not a criterion for a home visit, the criteria applies to both older and younger people. Home visits will not be undertaken for social / transport reasons.
- Decisions as to whether or not a home visit is warranted and the urgency of it rest with the GPs. The patient may initially receive a telephone call from a member of surgery staff enquiring about the nature of your request so that information can be passed to a healthcare professional who may also contact you to assess your condition.
- Visit requests should be made as early as possible. The majority of requests should therefore be received in the morning. No guarantee will be given as to which healthcare professional will attend or whether a healthcare professional will attend.
- You may be offered an appointment at the surgery if the healthcare professionals feel that it is more appropriate. We are better able to assess patients in the surgery where we have access to the full clinical record, specialist equipment, good lighting and examination facilities, and support services such as Practice Nurses.
- For patients experiencing CHEST PAIN, SHORTNESS OF BREATH AND LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS, receptionists will advise to dial 999 immediately.
Home visiting makes clinical sense and a healthcare professional is LIKELY to visit when it is the best way of giving a medical opinion in cases involving:
- The terminally ill
- The truly bed-bound patient, for whom travel to premises by car would cause deterioration to their medical condition or unacceptable discomfort.
A health care professional MAY visit for these conditions:
- Those who are not usually bed-bound but currently have a clinical condition that prevents them from being ambulatory.
A Healthcare professional will NOT USUALLY visit for these conditions and circumstances and it is expected that the patient will attend the surgery to be seen:
- Common symptoms of childhood fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea /vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These patients are usually well enough to travel by car. It is not harmful to take a child with a fever outside. These children may not be fit to travel by bus or walk, but car transport is available from friends, relatives or taxi firms.
- Adults with common problems, such as a cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pain, are also readily transportable by car to the surgery premises.
- Common problems in the elderly, such as poor mobility, joint pain and general malaise, would also best be treated by consultation at the surgery premises where the facilities are available for full examination and investigations. The exception to this would be the truly bed-bound patient.
Please note the following
- The practice is not responsible for arranging transport to the surgery.
- We will not visit for convenience.
- Wherever possible patients requiring a consultation with a GP will be asked to attend the surgery.
- Home visits are not an efficient or effective use of pressurised GP time.